Oscar¨ winner RUSSELL CROWE as Javert in "Les MisŽrables", the motion-picture adaptation of the beloved global stage sensation seen by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 languages around the globe and still breaking box-office records everywhere in its 28th year.

Photo: Laurie Sparham, Universal Pictures

Oscar¨ winner RUSSELL CROWE as Javert in "Les MisŽrables", the...

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"Les Miserables."

"Les Miserables."

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Jean Valjean (HUGH JACKMAN) embraces a very ill Fantine (ANNE HATHAWAY) in "Les MisŽrables", the motion-picture adaptation of the beloved global stage sensation seen by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 languages around the globe and still breaking box-office records everywhere in its 28th year.

Photo: Laurie Sparham, Universal Pictures

Jean Valjean (HUGH JACKMAN) embraces a very ill Fantine (ANNE...

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Anne Hathaway as Fantine in "Les Miserables"

Photo: Universal Pictures

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in "Les Miserables"

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Russell Crowe as Javert, center, in a scene from the motion-picture adaptation of "Les Misérables,” directed by Tom Hooper.

Photo: Laurie Sparham, Associated Press

Russell Crowe as Javert, center, in a scene from the motion-picture...

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This film image released by Universal Pictures shows Eddie Redmayne as Marius, left, and Amanda Seyfried as Cosette in a scene from "Les Miserables."

Photo: James Fisher, Associated Press

This film image released by Universal Pictures shows Eddie Redmayne...

Les Misérables

At the heart of the "Les Misérables" movie was a good idea that just didn't work out this time. The idea was that the actors should sing their songs live on camera.

In almost every other musical you've ever seen, the actors lip-sync to a recorded track, but singing live offers the possibility for more risk and excitement, along with spontaneous acting moments that simply can't happen if an actor has to think about moving his lips a certain way. To some degree, director Tom Hooper ("The King's Speech") got what he was looking for. Anne Hathaway's version of "I Dreamed a Dream," for example, is very in-the-moment, with an emotional freshness you rarely see in musicals.

But with every gain, there is a loss. Most of the songs in "Les Misérables" are contemplative - internal monologues that, translated to film, lend themselves to close-up. In close-up the actors sing as they would speak to someone close by, quietly and naturalistically. In the case of Hathaway, the close scrutiny takes the grandeur out of her big song, and though the quality of her acting is indisputable, she sobs through half of it. You know what they say on Broadway: When there are tears on the stage, there are dry eyes in the house.

Yet Hathaway thrives compared with Hugh Jackman, on whose performance as Jean Valjean the entire film turns. As anyone who has ever heard him knows, Jackman, when he sings in full voice, has a high, pinging, pleasing tenor that's a precision instrument. It's a voice that can thrill an audience. But for most of "Les Misérables," he is in half voice, singing in close-up, and in half-voice Jackman is a disaster. His voice quavers and wobbles in and out of tune. There are times in "Les Misérables" where you might think the music is an experiment in atonal composition. But no, that's Jackman.

One measure of just how unmanned Jackman is by this restraint is that Russell Crowe, as Valjean's nemesis Inspector Javert, often sounds no worse than Jackman does, and Crowe can't sing to save his life. Crowe can act, however, and he can treat "Les Misérables" as though it were just another dramatic film, albeit with singing, which it is. That's a problem.

An adaptation of the stage musical, which was in turn adapted from the eponymous Victor Hugo novel, "Les Misérables" tells the story of Valjean, who is released from prison having done time for stealing a loaf of bread. After he breaks the law again, he spends the rest of his life on the run, living under an assumed name and trying to escape the reach of Javert, who isn't cruel so much as infuriatingly unimaginative. His plodding, dogmatic adherence to the law is contrasted with Valjean's impulsive compassion, with Valjean emerging as the true (unconscious) Christian and Javert as the true (unconscious) monster.

Such a metaphysical story cries out for a heightened atmosphere, one that you might find in a stage musical. Unfortunately, the transplanting of material from one medium to another is always a delicate procedure, and sometimes the patient dies. In the case of "Les Misérables," film literalizes the story and makes maudlin or ridiculous that which might have seemed poetic on the stage. The notion of Valjean's having served time for stealing bread loses its metaphorical significance and seems more like a hard luck story that Valjean just won't stop harping on. Likewise, the young revolutionaries in Act II - hiding behind barricades and fighting the entire French army - don't seem like heroes so much as idiots getting themselves slaughtered for no good reason.

The cast is more than adequate - Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as the young lovers, Samantha Barks as the forlorn Eponine - but they're trapped within a design in which the characters seem to care more about their problems than the audience. Likewise, we might say nice things about Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as lowdown cockney innkeepers, but the real conversation we should be having is whether those characters should have been included in the movie at all.

We also might want to ask why all these French characters not only have English accents but are presented as stock British types. The French and the English are not exactly interchangeable, as we all know from the Middle Ages.

When Bob Fosse made "Cabaret," he completely reimagined it for the screen. He threw out songs and added a song - "Maybe This Time" - and the result was a classic film. Hooper, by contrast, essentially blows out the stage "Les Misérables" into a big gorgeous blockbuster, but it's a straight conversion, such that you can still see the act break. He doesn't account for inconvenient details, for example that on screen, it's not wise to play the same scene over and over (e.g., Javert shows up, Valjean escapes). Nor is it a good idea to have three ballads in a row.

Fans of "Les Misérables" wouldn't have minded if the movie were different, but better, or just as effective. The screen version demanded some reconception, some vision to make sense of its existence. Instead, we're left with a film that is conscientious in all its particulars and yet strangely and mysteriously dead.